Kicking off Season 4 of the WeAreNetflix Podcast are William Horberg (Executive Producer of The Queen’s Gambit) and Blair Fetter (Director of Original Series at Netflix) for an inside look on the creative partnership between Netflix and The Queen's Gambit producers to bring this beloved series to life.
[Narrator] This is, We Are Netflix,
Netflix employees talking
about work and life at Netflix.
(Netflix intro sound plays)
- [Bill] I don't wanna
sound like a sycophant
because I'm on the We Are
Netflix podcast, but genuinely,
this was one of the best
studio experiences I've had,
in my 30, 40 years out in Hollywood.
- [Lyle] That's Bill Holberg,
talking about working
on "The Queen's Gambit."
Now, watching people play
chess may not sound enthralling
all the suspense of the game,
if you can find some is internal, quiet.
In other words, hard to
capture cinematically.
But producer Bill Holberg
has actually done it twice.
First in the 1993 film,
"Searching for Bobby Fischer"
and now on Netflix with the hit series,
"The Queen's Gambit."
Both stories are about
young chess prodigies
and both happen to be about
a lot more than chess.
"The Queen's Gambit" has
been a huge hit for Netflix.
In the series first 28 days of release,
62 million households chose to watch it
making it Netflix's biggest
scripted limited series to date.
The show made top 10 in
92 different countries,
ranking number one in 63 of them.
And the series' culture impact
went beyond people watching.
After the series launched
search queries for chess doubled
and searches for how to play
chess hit a nine-year peak.
Chess sets have dramatically
increased in sales
and the number of new players
on chess.com has skyrocketed.
I'm Lyle Troxell, today on We Are Netflix,
I speak with executive
producer, Bill Holberg,
as well as Blair Fetter,
Director of Original Series at Netflix
all about how the series came to life.
From the pages of Walter Tevis's novel
through a years long adaptation
process to the screen.
That novel by the way,
has now landed on the New
York Times bestseller list
37 years after its release.
And it's where we
started our conversation.
Bill, when did you first read
Walter Tevis's 1983 novel,
"The Queen's Gambit?"
- [Bill] Well, I was
tipped off to the book
by the wonderful author, Michael Ondaatje,
writer of "The English Patient."
I met him through Anthony Minghella
when we were making "The
Talented Mr. Ripley"
and Ondaatje told me this
was one of his favorite books
and that it was something that
he read every couple years
to remember how to write.
He was just so admirable of
the craft of the storytelling
of Walter Tevis, so he's no slouch,
and with that kind of recommendation,
I ran out to buy the book
and I just consumed it
and loved it and started
wondering why hasn't anybody,
made a movie out of this.
And lo and behold, when I
went to track down the rights,
it turned out, they were held
by an old friend of mine,
the wonderful Scottish man,
who's a producer and a
screenwriter named Alan Scott.
- [Lyle] And then Alan
kind of became a partner
in this project, yeah?
Well, Alan, let me become his partner.
He had actually acquired the rights
probably in the late
eighties, early nineties,
and he, so he had been at it
for about 10 years or more
by the time I tracked him down.
And I just said, "I love this
book and I'd love to help
"and if there's anything I
could do to join forces with you
"and see if we could
get this over the hill,
"I'd love to team up," and he was gracious
and we started working together.
And at that time we were
really focused on making it
as a feature film.
Alan in fact had written a feature script,
his own adaptation of the book.
And we went to a number
of different directors,
starting with Bernardo Bertolucci,
who Alan was in discussions
with really way back in the day,
there were always a number
of high-end filmmakers
interested in this material.
My friend, Tom Tickfur
was going to direct it
and he and Alan and I worked on
a draft of the script together
but then he went off to make "Perfume."
I brought it to Mark Forster,
I brought it to Frank Oz
and eventually I brought it to Scott Frank
who I just had a strong hunch
would really connect to this
probably because he wrote
"Little man tape" back in the day
and I could tell that
he was already kind of
leaning into this territory of exploring,
child prodigies and genius characters,
precocious characters, and Scott loved it.
And he and I ran around
trying to find a home for it
but it never quite added up,
it's not a really
inexpensive story to tell
because it moves all around America,
and then it moves to Europe
and it takes place in seven
or eight different cities.
- [Lyle] And when you were having
this earlier conversation with Scott,
Frank, you're also
talking about it as a film
which makes it a secondary challenge.
- [Bill] Yeah, we were focused
on making it as a film,
Scott and I and this was in the oughts,
probably 2005, six, seven in there.
And you know, there still
was a market at that time
for independent films and
financing and distribution,
but the kind of cost
value equation of this
just never quite lined
up to crack the code.
- [Lyle] Bill, were you
worried about producing this
that you'd be labeled as
a a chess movie maker?
Concerning your wonderful success
with "Searching for Bobby Fischer?"
- [Bill] It's very funny to me
that I kind of started my career,
and maybe now I'm in the
twilight of my career
book-ended by these chess stories
but I didn't really come to
either of them through chess.
I'm not a chess player myself.
I really came through the books.
I was given the book of
"Searching for Bobby Fischer"
by Scott Rudin and when
I was at Paramount,
we had a deal with Steve Zaillian
and we were looking for something for him
to adapt for himself to direct
and I just loved that memoir,
it was so beautiful as a father son story
and really about parenting
and about competition
and the nature of the
competition between kids.
So it was in the chess world.
And of course that was
a big, big part of it
but the themes and the relationships
are what really drew me to it,
then I would say the same
with "Queens Gambit."
It has a wonderful,
exciting sports narrative
but what made me think
that this could really be
a more universal story and
accessible to an audience
beyond people who play chess
or care about it in any way
was really the character of
Beth Harmon and her trauma
and her coming of age
and her tremendous emotional
journey in this piece.
And that just carried
me along as a reader.
And I thought, if I'm having
this level of experience,
I think an audience would
really connect to her
in the same way.
- [Lyle] So Alan Scott's in love with it,
you're in love with it.
Scott Frank's in love with
it, it's 10 years ago.
And then fast forward,
Blair, will you tell the story
from Netflix perspective?
How do you first hear about the pitch
of "The Queen's Gambit" as the title?
- [Blair] It started with
the limited series, "Godless"
which was a feature film
that Scott had written
like 15 years before and
had never quite found a home
to get it made as a movie.
And he pitched that to us
and as a limited series
and we really had one of the most
amazing experiences with
him to sort of watch him
expand that script to seven hours
and go through the production
and we just had such a great time,
we were so proud of that show
and such an elevated sort of Western
but when we were sort of wrapping it up,
we immediately started
talking to Scott about like
what can we do next?
And he shared the book for
"The Queen's Gambit" with me.
- [Lyle] So you just liked
working with Scott Frank so much,
you just wanted to do
another project with them?
- [Blair] Well, yeah, I
mean, it just felt like
he did such a good job with "Godless"
in doing something that what
it was bigger than a movie,
but it wasn't ongoing series,
it was just this sort of special thing.
And it wasn't that we were,
Oh my God we have to do another
limited series with Scott,
it was just, he's just a, a dream partner,
very responsible and a joy to work with.
So we merely, we sort of
pitched things to him,
he pitched stuff to us.
And I really gravitated to the book
in the same way that
Bill spoke about in that
it's a really easy read, it's so fun,
it really makes you feel
good when it's all done.
I was a big fan of
"Searching for Bobby Fisher"
so I really like immediately
saw how you can make chess
feel like a dramatic sports
movie to a certain extent.
So it wasn't a traditional,
like pitch, here's the show,
it was just Scott saying,
"What do you think about this?"
And then we said, "Yeah, let's do it."
And then we sort of went from there.
- [Lyle] Okay, so the pitch
is, Scott of course says
you gotta read the book, start off.
So you read the book Blair,
and he talks with you a bit about it.
But then at some point there's probably
a more formal process, like, what is this,
what does the actual structure look like
for you all to sit down?
How big is the group?
Before you said yes,
yes, you know that stage,
what does that look like, Blair?
- [Blair] I mean, truly it's a,
it was a very informal process.
I mean that we, we said like,
"Hey Scott we would love
to do this with you,
"but how about we make it a
deal where you write the pilot
"so we can kind of see exactly what it is
"and then we'll sort of go from there?"
So it wasn't a typical
story to series endeavor
like we do often this
was a little more like
let's just see where it goes
and he was game to do it.
And of course the first
draft he wrote was exquisite.
And we were really aligned I think about
what made it special,
so there were no
surprises in that process.
And then it was I think
it was somewhere in there,
he introduced us to Bill
as his partner in this.
And you know, I think we
all kind of saw eye to eye
about what needed to be adapted.
So much of the book takes
place inside Beth's head
and we knew that that was
gonna be a tricky thing
to sort of visualize on the screen.
And, but it was very
clear from the beginning
that he could do it.
It's one of those things
where if you hear the logline
like period chest show,
doesn't sound very commercial.
But when you read the book and you hear,
sort of the excitement from Scott and Bill
it's really easy to go like,
"Oh yeah, this is a no brainer."
- [Lyle] And you look
at their work as well
for their past work and
know that they can do it.
- [Bill] I was a studio
executive for about five years
and what Blair is describing
is that classic moment
when somebody made a hit movie for you
and then you say, "Hey, we love you,
"What do you wanna do next?"
Then they pull out their
orphan girl chest book
and say, "Here, it is, man,
this is my next project."
And it's not exactly what
you were kind of hoping
they were going to walk in the door.
- [Lyle] And you say, well,
why don't you write a pilot,
and we'll see?
- [Blair] No, I truly, truly was that,
I truly really respond to the book
and felt like it was
a worthwhile endeavor.
I know exactly what
you're talking about Bill
but it was really like.
- [Bill] No, but I have to say like,
here's the book, read it moment.
But then when you read the book,
it really kind of flips
on its head and you go,
Oh, I get it, I get why these guys love it
and they wanna do it.
- [Lyle] The making of films
is still kind of a mystery
in a lot of sense to me and
I'm sure a lot of people.
You hire, like, so Bill's
already attached to the,
this piece, they've worked together,
Scott and Bill have worked together,
they know each other, they've
talked about this piece
so he's involved.
Blair, do you hire Scott to do it?
Like, how does the relationship,
the financial structure work?
Is it corporation starts
what happens Blair?
At the, what's the next step
you're gonna move forward?
- [Blair] The next step was that,
yeah, I think, our deal
with Scott was that
we would read the script
and then agreed to Greenlight the show.
And I think we had a conversation about
sort of the size and scope
of it because at its core,
it's a very intimate character drama,
but it takes place across the world
and so we all kind of agreed
what the sort of size of
the production could be
that would make sense.
And Scott and Bill were great partners
and they agreed we all aligned
pretty quickly about it
and then, you know, we
hit the ground running.
Scott was writing all the
scripts and Bill was no,
hiring all the crew and sort of deciding
where the locations were gonna be
and that was, it was not
easy, but relatively seamless.
- [Lyle] So before you launch it,
you have to talk about
how much it's gonna cost,
but that it's gonna be multiple location
that you've got to have
all these period pieces.
That's a big piece of green-lighting it,
is that right Blair?
- [Blair] Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I think it depends on the show
and what you think that
the audience is gonna be.
But I think this one, we knew it was,
we believed in the creative,
but we knew that there were
probably some barriers for
entry to some audiences
so that's why we wanted to make
a reasonable sized bet on it
and rather than say,
"Yes, Scott, you can go to all
these different countries."
And we looked at it and we
knew that like creatively
if we shot it in Berlin, we
would be able to, you know
shoot all those different scenes in Europe
and fake Kentucky and so
it all kind of made sense.
- [Lyle] And have some
impressive buildings
to shoot in that already
have a lot of what we need.
- Yeah.
- Yeah
- [Bill] Yeah, that was
not an obvious choice
because there's not a
single moment in the story
that takes place in Berlin
but it was driven by two things.
Scott had a number of his core
team returning from "Godless"
his cinematographer, Stephen
Meisler, amazing editor
Michelle Tesoro his AD,
Aldrich Porter came back
but he was looking for
a production designer
and looking for somebody who,
had a particular skill set
and aesthetic vision let's say
to do this show it's fifties,
sixties cold war era,
as I said, it moves around a lot.
So it's a show where building
the world of the show
is very much a huge part
of the experience of it.
And he and I had a kind of kismat moment
where we both realized that we
were big Babylon Berlin fans.
And we were kind of using
that as a comp of wow,
what an elegant, classy period production.
But it looks very lived
in, it doesn't look like
one of those period shows that's
kind of preserved in Amber
and that was really important to him.
And I said, "Well, the
guy who designs that
"is an old friend of mine," Uli Hanisch,
we had worked together about 20 years ago
on a movie called "Heaven."
And I said, "Let me call him up
"and send him the book
"and see if he's available, interested."
So that was the key thing,
when those guys connected
it was like a Vulcan mind meld,
they just really were
riffing and very excited
about what they heard from
each other about the potential.
So we said, okay, well,
let's go over to Berlin
and meet Uli.
And at that point we were thinking like,
maybe we'll do 30% of this over here
because clearly we had to go to Europe
to shoot Moscow and Paris.
We weren't gonna be able to
cheat those anywhere else
but once we got there, it
just became a revelation to us
because all of Berlin
is basically built after world war two.
So the architecture in every aspect
really lent itself to this show.
And there's so much of
it that's interiors,
so it's hotel rooms, it's high
school gyms, it's ballrooms,
it's lobbies and certain
a number of halls.
And by the time we left
Berlin and I think,
maybe it was only about a five day trip,
it seemed obvious to us
that we could do our stage work there.
And then we walked into
this place and we said,
"This is Las Vegas in the 1960s
"here in the middle of Berlin.
"How is this possible?"
And so the pieces just
kept tumbling that way.
Mexico City was probably the last thing.
I was a skeptic.
I was like, man, if you can
shoot Mexico city in Berlin,
that's like next level.
- And you did, yeah.
- But we did.
- [Lyle] And did, did they
cost resign Gabriela also,
was she already in Berlin?
I mean, the design is so incredible
that it's worth mentioning many times.
- Yeah, well that first trip was Uli
and Uli's whole team.
You know we had a great
serendipitous thing
where the third season of
Babylon Berlin was finishing
and we kind of realized,
well, that crew is all gonna be available.
So Uli's the captain, but he
has like the best art director,
the best prop man, the best set decorator,
they were all like A plus people.
So we kind of said, "Look,
we want the whole team."
We also met with probably
the best line producer
I've ever worked with a
German man named Marcus Loges,
who has now got a second career
because Scott cast him to play Lushenko,
the penultimate Russian Grandmaster
that Beth defeats in
the Moscow tournament.
And through Marcus,
we were introduced to Gabriele Binder
who's also German, she had
done a movie I just loved
several years ago called
"The Lives of Others,"
It was an Oscar winning foreign film.
So we met her and she joined the team
and we tried to go local
as much as we could,
except for the people that
had continuity with doc.
- [Lyle] Blair, it sounds
like Bill and Scott
just pulled together these amazing people
they wanted to work with,
what was your job in this?
Just to sit back and go,
"Yes, they're doing great."
Explain the process of what you do.
- [Blair] Yeah, so as
a creative executive,
we're tasked with
green-lighting the next shows
that are going to be on Netflix
and making sure they're
as great as possible
and being as supportive to
the filmmakers as possible.
So on this one because we
had such a level of talent
at the top between Scott and Bill, it was,
obviously it's a, it's a
real luxury and privilege
to work with them.
So while all that was happening,
Scott was adapting the book
into the seven episodes.
So we were reading
those scripts with Scott
and bringing up questions
and we were really aligned with
him about kind of the goals
for the adaptation, how to shine a light
on what's going on with Beth
without having to be inside of
her head, like in the novel.
So my colleague, Laura Delanet Hay and I
as we were reading the
scripts, we went to New York
and sat with him and kind of went through
the whole thing with him.
We talked a lot about
the different casting,
you're sort of just holding
the hands of the filmmakers
along the way and helping them
solve all the different challenges.
So, you know, while they're on the ground
talking about Berlin we're
looking at all the look books
for all the different designers
that they're trying to hire
and obviously in this one,
it was a real privilege
because all the choices they
wanted to make were, amazing.
- [Lyle] Pretty good.
Were there times Blair
where you were like,
Ooh this has to change.
Or as a team at Netflix,
we feel like something has to change here?
No, I mean, I'd say this one,
we didn't really ever
butt heads on any creative
throughout the production.
I think when we were in post,
there's always sort of a push and pull
about specifically when
you have a writer director
who's really passionate
about the material,
there's a little bit of push and pull
about sort of the length of episodes
and sort of the pace.
And that's always sort of a discussion
and again, Scott and bill
were real fun partners
to have in post and you kind
of act as like sort of first,
the first audience to give them
this sort of first set of feedback.
But I mean, I would say of all
the shows that I worked on,
this one really, we were
in lock step along the way.
So there was never a lot of,
"Hey Scott, you should change this."
- [Lyle] Okay, okay,
that's your perspective.
Bill, was there a lot of
pushback from Netflix saying,
"You gotta do this, gotta do that?"
- [Bill] Well, since I'm on
the podcast, We Are Netflix,
no, I, I was gonna say I don't
wanna sound like a sycophant
because I'm on the We
Are Netflix podcasts,
but genuinely this was one of the best
studio experiences I've had
in my 30, 40 years out in Hollywood
from the top down, Cindy Holland
had read the book and kind of
blessed moving ahead with this
and Peter Friedlander and Blair and Laura
were great daily partners just
through the rough and tumble
of any production.
And they were extremely supportive.
They were very clear at the beginning.
This is kind of the box we want to fit in.
We don't see this on
the scale of a Godless
so we don't see the audience
necessarily having the potential of that
which we understood and agreed with.
And they gave us a kind
of template, a budget
and then we went through our process
and we had to actualize everything.
But, we were able to hit the target
and from putting the casting director on
before we really had all the scripts,
it was just kind of one vote
of confidence after another
our first choice was Anya Taylor Joy,
she read the book and loved it.
Scott met with her in London,
said this is who I want to star in it.
It was a very quick, yes.
And probably one of the most
impressive things I've seen
from my point of view was
the very quick support we had
for the casting of Marielle Heller
because that was not an
obvious choice by any means.
It was really a leap of faith
on behalf of the network,
knowing that she's a brilliant filmmaker
and she had been an actress,
but she didn't have any
body of work to look at
to really say, "Hey,
yeah, she could do this."
So it was just Scott and I saying,
"We really love her and think
she's got what it takes."
- [Lyle] Marielle Heller of
course plays Alma Wheatley
which is Beth's adopted mother.
And you knew her as a filmmaker.
- [Bill] Well, Scott had been her mentor
at the Sundance lab on her first film.
So they had a very close relationship
and he had already kind of shepherd her
through that process.
So he knew that she was an
actress who had become a writer
and now a director
and was kind of a triple threat, hyphen it
and she had had a very small role
in one of his previous films
that he had had to cut out actually.
So he kind of owed her one.
- [Lyle] So, why was her
casting unusual to you?
Do you feel like the studio
would have, in another situation
the studio would have stepped in and said,
"this is the actor we want to
promote this for this project?"
- [Bill] Yeah, it's a very
significant role in the piece.
And I'm much more accustomed
to the kind of pressure
to cast a certain level of marquee name
who the studio feels they can
then use to hang the marketing on.
But in this case, I think
with Scott, the fact
that we already had Anya, we
had Bill Camp, we had Thomas
there were other pieces in place already
that felt like this is a
really strong ensemble,
but nonetheless, I got to say,
I can't think of any other studio
that would have really so quickly,
supported us creatively and said,
"We're gonna back your play here."
- [Lyle] Blair, is that a risk for you?
Did you look at her and go,
"Well, she doesn't have a long history."
Were you questioning that decision?
Did you think about speaking up?
- [Blair] I think under
other situations maybe,
but again, it was sort
of like what Bill said
is like we had our cast
that was looking remarkable
and we had gone through the
experience with Scott before
and it's so easy just to
sort of trust their judgment,
'cause they're just pros.
So it didn't feel like
something worth pushing back on
and we're fans of hers
anyway, so it felt like,
yeah if he thinks she
can do it, she can do it.
- [Lyle] Yeah, all right,
let's talk a little bit about chess.
Bill you worked, as we
talked about earlier,
worked on "Searching for Bobby Fischer."
And at that time you worked with
the chess expert for this piece
as well, Bruce Pandolfini.
And tell me about bringing him in
and when did you bring a chess expert in?
- [Bill] Bruce Pandolfini was
the very first call I made
when we kind of knew that this had a home
and was going to start being developed.
And I told Scott about my
experience with Bruce who,
he is the character in
"Searching for Bobby Fischer,"
Ben Kingsley, is playing Bruce Pandolfini.
And so the book was really
about him as the teacher
of Fred Waitzkin's son.
And I just said, it's not
just that he's a chess master,
he really has a unique
ability to help the filmmaker
understand the mechanics of the game
and how to work with it and help them
with the kind of visual language even.
But he has a real gift
to talking to the actors
and just making them
relaxed and comfortable
and teaching them quickly
to be able to look like
they've been playing
chess their whole life.
And the volume of games
in "Queen's Gambit"
was exponentially greater than
"Searching for Bobby Fisher."
I think at the end, we had developed like
300 complete chess
games that were going on
foreground and background.
So the first lunch we
had actually in New York
was with Alan Scott and Scott
Frank and Bruce Pandolfini.
And there was a wonderful moment
because I had known Bruce for 25 years
but I had no idea that he
actually had been hired by,
I think it was Random House
to be Walter Tevis' consultant
when he was writing the
book, "The Queen's Gambit."
And not only that, he
was the guy who suggested
the title of "The
Queen's Gambit" to Tevis.
So it was this great
feeling like, Oh my God
we're like sitting here
with the Queens Gambit,
like, he's right at the table.
And of course Scott loved him.
And Bruce started both working
with the casting people
in terms of trying to help
them organize the search
for actors that could look convincing
in some of these small parts.
And then also reading the scripts and
kind of giving Scott his authenticity,
smell tests kind of pass.
And then through Bruce,
we actually got introduced
to Gary Kasparov who of course is maybe
the greatest chess player of all time.
And we met Gary in New York.
And that was another thing where
there was just a kind of
surprise dimension to it where,
we knew he'd have amazing technical advice
around the chess and the show
but what we didn't quite expect was
that his own personal
biography and even his age
kind of mirrors Beth
Harmon to a certain degree.
And so he was able to talk very personally
about growing up in that
era, being a child prodigy,
the family dynamics, the school dynamics,
the getting into the Soviet chess system.
The fact that those KGB agents
are with Borgof in Mexico
came from Gary Kasparov.
He just said, there's
no way a guy like that
would be able to travel
around internationally
without minders who are
kind of shadowing him.
So Scott was a kid in a candy store,
he had Bruce and Gary on speed dial
and we needed all the help we could get.
We were kind of terrified about
how to make the chess play,
to really make it something that people
could watch and enjoy.
And Scott's whole key was it
had to have an emotional reason
for every single game.
There had to be some raison
d'être in Beth's old life
that kept us interested in
the context of the game.
- [Lyle] This brings to mind quite clearly
that you've just spoken about a lot of men
involved in chess and in an industry
that's very male dominant
in some respects,
but we're talking about
a female protagonist the entire time.
So where is the expert
from the female protagonist
who touches chess in the
in the sixties and fifties?
- [Bill] Yeah, I would say this,
we were kind of listening
to a lot of women
in our immediate family about
the characters and the drama
but on the technical chess side,
because of my past
history with Pandolfini,
and because that's a real job
that somebody has to have
a lot of experience in,
like being a the interface
between filmmaking
and recreating chess games on camera.
So there are other amazing now,
women chess players and champions
but it wasn't my impulse
to reach out to them
in the actual production of this
because I needed a very
specific skillset for that.
- [Lyle] The chess piece of it, yeah.
I guess I'm just thinking about that
we clearly see a very large challenge
of a woman leading
through that chess world.
And I'm just curious where that,
does that come from the book
and you're able to lean on that?
Blair, if you wanna step in at all,
what, from your perspective,
did you read this book and go,
"Oh good, we've got a strong
female lead on this piece?"
Is that an important aspect
of actually even producing it?
- [Blair] Yeah, I mean, I
think I responded to the,
the full arc of the
character and the under
I think they, the underdog quality to it
in the kind of sports movie piece of it.
And it felt like the character as a woman,
going through my someones
trauma in her personal life
and then being in this world where
she's a fish out of water
it was all exciting to me,
and Scott, his previous
series with us, "Godless",
was really a feminist Western.
And so I had a faith that he could tackle,
sort of a young adult coming of age story.
- [Lyle] Blair, when did
you know that this show
was gonna be as successful as it is?
- [Blair] Well the scripts
are really good obviously
and the dailies and the
design of it all was terrific.
So we always felt like,
okay, this show is very good,
it's gonna be great.
But I think the first glimpse
I had was my colleagues,
Peter, Laura and Cindy
Holland were in New York
for a premiere of another show.
And Scott was cutting,
and he hadn't shared
any of the cuts with us
but he let them go into the editing bay.
And I was stuck in LA, so I was jealous
but they all came out of that meeting
and all pinged me separately
to sort of say like,
"Whoa It's incredible."
- [Lyle] What do you mean
he wasn't sharing the cuts with you?
Is that a standard practice for us
that we just let the creatives go for it?
- [Blair] Well, he was in the process
of doing his director's cuts.
So there's a, he has to have
typically in an episodic series,
the director has a few days
they give to the producers
and eventually it makes its way to us.
This one, because he
directed the whole thing,
he had a few months to
work on his assembly
before he was gonna share with us.
But as a collaborator,
they were in New York.
He said, "Why don't you come over?"
And he showed them, I think,
just a handful of sequences.
And it wasn't something, he
was gonna email it to us.
And it was just, they
were in New York and,
we're all friendly and they
all came out of that meeting.
And like, I literally got a call
from each one of them separately.
Like, Whoa, it's really good.
And so I think that's the,
that's like, that first time
you see it, you go like,
"Oh, okay, it really does work."
We think it's there, we
on the page, it's there,
the performance of the dailies look good
but once you kind of see it cut together,
and then I'd say, it
just sort of felt good
from that moment forward.
- [Lyle] Bill, what about for you?
When did you know we had a, a hit?
- [Bill] Probably Monday, October 26th.
- [Lyle] Release day.
- [Bill] Yeah, I mean, we
were very proud of the show
and we knew we had a caught
lightning in a bottle
with Anya and her incredible
performance and Marielle
and the actress who played Jolene.
And so it felt very strong, I just think
it was beyond any of
our wildest imagination
to contemplate that this chess drama
was gonna hit the Zeitgeist
and become this wildfire
and word of mouth phenomenon
and those are things
you just can't predict.
When something like that happens,
it's just the right character
at the right moment.
And somehow, Beth Harmon
was kind of the hero
that we needed at the end of 2020
in this kind of existentially tough year
that we've all been living through.
And then, when we got
that call from Netflix,
it was on a weekend.
- [Lyle] You're talking about
the producers call, right?
- [Bill] Yeah, it was the producers call
the day before they announced
that this was the most watched series,
limited series of Netflix history.
That was just like, you
gotta be kidding me.
(Bill laughs)
I mean, it was an incredible feeling
and to see all these young
girls signing up for chess clubs
and chess set sales going through the roof
and it's become just a part of
like pop culture vernacular.
And I don't think anybody
involved with this
in their wildest dreams could
have seen that happening,
or we would have like bought stock
in chess set manufacturer companies.
- [Lyle] Blair, what was your,
what was the biggest surprise for you
with regards to the success?
- [Blair] I think for
me, like you buy a show
and you're, as you're seeing it through,
you have to kind of
explain to a lot of people
what you're working on and why you like it
and I would always sort of
pitch the show to people
and talk about how, like,
I think there's a lot of cool
entry points to this show
for a lot of different audiences,
it's a really classy period drama
for the people who like "The Crown."
And I think it's got this
really great young adult
coming of age story, and it's
really like a sports movie.
And so I'd always sort of talk about,
Oh there's all these different audiences
that could totally love this show.
And I didn't, in my
head, I didn't think that
all of them would totally do that.
- [Lyle] You were trying to
convince other people, right?
- [Blair] Yes, yes, yes, yes.
So like the sports movie thing was always
the pie in the sky and
then I'm on this text chain
with Bill and Scott and lo and behold,
somebody is watching football
and like on the broadcaster
was using "The Queen's
Gambit" as an analogy for,
a football game.
This is like a few weeks ago.
So it really feels like
we did kind of get all
those different audiences.
- [Lyle] What do we share with
our creative teams like this?
Like you had the producer
call you, share some numbers,
we've shared publicly some
numbers about this show
but what do we typically share
with the people that make shows with us?
- [Blair] Yeah, I mean,
I think transparency's,
important to us.
And so the first thing
is there's a daily top 10
in various territories countries,
of the top 10 things that
are on Netflix every day.
With our filmmakers we share the like,
a 10 day update and a 28 day update.
And we give them a number of households
that have started the show,
so watched two minutes
and then a number of households
that have completed the show.
And so they can really
get a sense of sort of
how many people are jumping in,
how many people are really loving it.
This one's a little
unique because I think,
it performed so well that it made sense
for us to share that.
So we gave these guys another
update sort of in the middle.
So they knew that was happening.
- [Lyle] How'd that feel for you Bill,
finding out what the numbers were like?
And did it feel like we
were sharing enough with you
about what was going on?
- [Bill] Well, I have
no point of comparison,
I've really mostly been
in the feature space
and it's all about pre-release awareness
and tracking numbers and opening weekend.
And usually by Saturday morning,
like they've done an ultimate, they say,
"Okay, this is your film will end here"
and there they're sadly
always pretty close.
So this has been kind of a
super fun learning curve for me
really getting a peek under the hood
of the whole marketing machine at Netflix
was really interesting and impressive
and I was really loving
all the creative materials
that they created.
And also it's so like, not
about an opening day for them,
it was very counter-intuitive for me.
Well, we're just gonna drop
the show on October 23rd
and see what happens.
Then we're like, "What
do you mean drop this?"
- [Lyle] That's on a Thursday,
what are you talking about?
- [Bill] So, yeah, I've really been
hungry for every little
aspect of kind of watching
how this works and
seeing how it goes down.
And I'm curious now, of course, like,
well, where are we at now?
Like once you get into that.
- [Lyle] Once you get the taste
you want it more and more?
- [Bill] Well, that whole figure,
like the metrics of household
starts and completes,
it's just a different language.
- [Lyle] And the top
tens in different regions
and such, yeah?
- [Bill] Yeah, how it's
working internationally.
- [Lyle] Why do Blair,
why do we share this
information with the creators?
Like we've hired the team,
you made the decision
to put the money down and
actually pay for the show,
congratulations by the way,
Blair, and they produce it
and they make this amazing piece.
What, why do we feel like it's important
to share this information
about how well it's done?
And we're not doing a
commissioning kind of thing,
we don't, like in traditional
opening weekend ticket sales
some of the people are above the line
and actually get a
percentage of how much money
the film's gonna make, that's
not the situation here,
so why do we share it?
- [Blair] I mean, I just
think we want the people that,
we want our partners, I think to
know exactly how our
consumers are engaging
with the material that they've sweated
for the last two years
creating it's just to me,
it's always been something that's,
well before we started
sharing more information,
it was always kind of I always struggled
because I wanted to be
able to tell them exactly
all the number of people
but now that we do it,
it's really rewarding
so people know exactly how many people
that they've entertained.
- [Lyle] It sounds like
you're all working together
as a really collaborative
team in some ways.
So it seems like you would
wanna share information,
that does make sense.
I'm glad we're doing it as well.
And it's been so exciting
to see from the outside
at some level, you know, how
successful the show has been.
And of course my family
is in love with it.
So thank you Bill for making it
and Blair for for green-lighting it.
Blair, how much, like you
had to do a prediction
and Bill even mentioned earlier
that the amount of money
that potentially could
have been spent on this
was slightly reduced
and you always have to
control budget and everything.
Blair, how did you decide
where that cap was?
And obviously you could have
spent a lot more on it as well
because it's done so well for us.
So have you made some learnings on that
with regards to budgeting,
with regards to the stats
that have emerged from it?
- [Blair] Well, I mean, I
think it's really like an art
and a science and that
you can, it's really easy
to look at what you
think a show is gonna be.
I mean, obviously you buy it
because you sort of have a
sense of what it is gonna be
and how big the audience is,
but at the end of the day,
it's really just sort of
like intuition and judgment.
That is, I think, driving those decisions.
So yeah, like this one, we
knew that it couldn't be
a teeny tiny show because it was gonna be
a global spanning saga.
- [Lyle] And a period piece as well.
- [Blair] Yeah, it's just about
finding that healthy balance
to really deliver on the spectacle of it
but also not make it
impossible for success.
- [Lyle] If you run into
another show that has
some kind of similarities to this,
are you gonna go and look
at metrics to figure out
if we're gonna do it or not?
Or is it still going to be
kind of like, if I like it,
and I like the people, and
I think it's a good show?
Like how do you make that decision
as someone who decides to
say yes or no to shows?
- [Blair] Well, I think
it's really just about
the kind of core of the
character journey at the heart
and that was something
that I think, looking back,
it was always undeniable along the way.
And that this sort of
period chess component of it
was always the thing that I
think threw people for a loop
but it was just a great story
about a great character.
And so I think you kind
of go back to that core
and then that's where you kind
of make that judgment call
about sort of how many people
can connect with that character.
And it's always gonna be
a bet, that's what we do,
and that's what's so fun
and thrilling about it.
So it will be.
- [Lyle] And it's always gonna be
an individual's decision too
which is kind of amazing to me.
It's always amazing to me
that you actually make a gut decision
on whether to do something like this.
- [Blair] Well, we don't do it alone.
There's a few of us that
all work together, so it's,
there's a whole team here
and we all talk about it.
Yes, there's a, ultimately
somebody's making the call,
but there's a lot of smart people here.
- [Bill] You only do it
alone when it doesn't work.
(Participants laugh)
Then they can point to you
and say, "Great idea, Blair."
(Participants laugh)
When it works, it's a crowded family.
- [Lyle] Let me, let me close by,
let me first ask you either of you
wanted to say anything
else about the project
or working together?
- [Bill] I wanna say again,
from my point of view producing,
teamwork is something that I would say
really described my
experience with Netflix.
Studios can get very balkanized
and you can deal with a
lot of internal politics
at different places.
And I really felt none of that here.
I mean, the post-production
team and the production team
and the marketing team
and the publicity team
and the people who were doing
the international dubbing
and all of it, it really felt like
everybody was talking to everybody,.
that everybody was on the same page,
that people were like
rooting for each other
and wanting to help each other.
And so that's fantastic
and as a filmmaker,
it's what you want to really
feel like your Compasses
are all pointed in the same direction.
And so then you can refine and fine tune
and because they weren't micromanaging us
then you're all ears
when they do have notes,
and you're very open to hearing them.
And so I felt like that was
kind of endemic of the process,
that when they had something
to say, it was always on point
and not, like sometimes
with studios, you go,
"What movie are you
calling the right producer?
"Or is this like different project
"that you're referencing here?"
- [Lyle] What about for you, Blair?
- [Blair] You know, I,
this one was just a,
just an overall, you
know, delight to work on.
Like again, like we
loved working with Scott.
It was so much fun to
get to know Bill on this
and to see these two
deliver exactly what they
promised at the beginning
and it's just been like gratifying
to sort of see the world
embrace something that,
I've had the privilege
to enjoy for the last couple
of years in various stages.
So it's very gratifying.
- [Lyle] Well, thank you both.
Well, let's find out what
you've been watching.
Blair, have you been watching lately?
- [Blair] I recently watched
"The Prom" with my family
and they were actually
really thrilled with it.
I mean, I didn't, my kids, I did not know
were fans of musicals, but
they were delighted by it.
It was a fun experience.
- [Lyle] Awesome, and Bill,
what have you watched lately?
I really just only recently
caught up with "Unorthodox"
and I found that really compelling,
I thought that actress was incredible.
I just watched at my
daughter's insistence,
a movie called "Never
Rarely, Sometimes Always."
And I thought that was very
touching, great acting,
people I'd never heard before.
"The Octopus Dude", I really loved it.
- [Lyle] "The Octopus
Dude", what is that called?
- [Bill] "Octopus Teacher",
is that what it's called?
Yeah, I mean, that was
so beautiful to look at
but also really moving.
They just had that New
York Doc Fest online.
So that was super great
because you could just access
their entire lineup and I
watched the Frank Sappa doc,
which I loved,
I watched this movie
called "The Dissident"
which was pretty harrowing
about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
And well, I just watched
that "Alex Give Me" doc
that was also incredibly
harrowing, totally under control.
- [Lyle] It sounds like
the list you're making
needs to be a public record
so that other people can pick it up.
- [Blair] Bill has seen
every movie stand up
and references all of them.
And so as somebody who's
watched a lot of movies
he makes me feel very uneducated
when he references incredible
movies from the sixties
that I've never even heard of.
Not just not seen, haven't
even heard of them.
- [Lyle] Well, Bill and Blair,
we have come to the final
of our time together
and I just wanna say that I was so excited
to talk with both of you, cause
I so much enjoyed the show.
What a pleasure.
Thank you very much for
sharing all this information
about how the production
actually gets created,
I really appreciate it.
- [Bill] Thank you Lyle,
thanks for having us
on We Are Netflix.
- [Narrator] We Are Netflix
is hosted by Lyle Troxell.
He's a senior software
engineer at Netflix.
You can keep up with "We Are Netflix"
on Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, and YouTube.
To learn more about careers at Netflix,
go to jobs.netflix.com.
(upbeat music)